Your posts were copied here, because the topic is one of interest to everyone, not just Patrick fans, and we wanted to share the news. The photos are cute too . Your posts are still in the Patrick thread as well.

If you'd like your post deleted from this thread, please feel free to use Edit Post to delete it, by all means.

It is very nice place and more proper name is "Russian speaking forum”, people who speak Russian, and majority of them don’t live in Russia, but in Israel, Ukraine, USA, Canada, European union. Russian fans are really rare there (...)
IMHO

It is not so. Most of users are Russians and interest to Russian skaters, coaches and so is very high.
For example, at "Personalities" (1st page) there are 22 topics about Russians and 7 topics about non-Russians.
Almost all non-Russians mentioned there are most famous world-level skaters and couples - Aliona SAVCHENKO / Robin SZOLKOWY, Maia SHIBUTANI / Alex SHIBUTANI, Meryl DAVIS / Charlie WHITE, Tessa VIRTUE / Scott MOIR, Denis TEN, Javier FERNANDEZ, Daisuke TAKAHASHI.
So we see that most of interest of FSO forum is to Russian skaters and situation.

If this forum is American (I believe it is), FSO forum is Russian. At this forum are some non-American users (me, for example), and at FSO forum are some non-Russian users.

Just to be more clear. That "Russian forum" is not really Russian, because you can't say any nice things about Russian skaters there, you will be the troll.

It is very nice place and more proper name is "Russian speaking forum”, people who speak Russian, and majority of them don’t live in Russia, but in Israel, Ukraine, USA, Canada, European union. Russian fans are really rare there, but you can see many journalists, specialists and so on. It is very similar to Golden skate, but in Russian. The difference from GFS is they still have mentality of the iron curtain. I have seen they ban people all the time for nothing, especially really Russian fans, who admaire rissian skater.
So don’t be mislead about Russian fans love for Chan, many of them don’t even live in Russia, or do that because they hate Plushenko, Gachinski, and every Russian skaters.

That's true. Their admin themselves always say that it's an International Russian speaking forum when some posters try to protest against the nastiness towards R-skaters there and usually get banned for that. But you have to realize that a good deal of posters on GS have a severe language barrier, I mean they can't read Russian and therefore they have no idea what it's going on there. Google translator cannot always help. So, it's quite natural that some people got confused. In any case, to say "Russian fans" while speaking about this particular award is ridiculous. It should be called as it is- FSO award since they reprsent only their voters and not all Russian figure skating community.

Originally Posted by AlexRus

Facts tell that it is not so.

Well, actually they tell that it is. Leonova, whom you mentioned, said at the conference after Russian Nationals in Dec-2011 about FSO's attitude to R-skaters, her including (need a youtube link?). On the official Plushenko site this particular FSO voting was advised to be ignored by admin due to the hostility towards Plu and banning his supporters (need a link?). Facts. Let FSO itself provide us facts- in 2010 it had 7,479 registered users (forumarchive now), currently 2, 147. No need to say anything else- people don't want even to register there.

Anyway, I wouldn't make a big deal of all this award stuff. A lot of forums have polls on this and that. Of course not all of them give stuffed toys as awards, but giving them is perfectly fine. A good ad for a forum to have pics with elite skaters holding this forum award. Nothing wrong with that. Funny is when some people here assume that 2,000 users can speak for all Russia. But nothing wrong with being funny either.

Eh, I see no harm mentioning it. I think it's cool to see what other forums are doing and I do enjoy seeing the photos! (As I said Han Yan -- so cute! (I need to be careful as I am an old lady compared to him. )

... and to vote. But I got what you are saying- the number over 7,000 users in 2010 was due to technical reasons, otherwise it wouldn't be that high in the first place.

Nobody speaks for Russia.

Some people did. When they presented this award as "Russian fans award" following by their usual song "How much everyone loves Patrick Chan!", then Bestskate8 and later others have to reply to clarify the stuff. That is all. Before that no one here was talking about the nature of FSO and no one cares. Any reasonable person would understand that their award represent a couple of hundred voters and no one else.